104 THE FLIGHT OF BIRDS 



These outdoor observations may be inaccurate, but 

 we can hardly cavil at the experiments in the shooting 

 range.* The verdict, is, indeed, a startling one. If 

 this is all they can do, birds have a reputation for 

 far greater pace than is warranted by the facts. They 

 are thought to be far swifter than the swiftest horse, 

 but Ladas's time over the Derby course, 1| miles, 

 gives him a velocity of 32f, while Spearmint in 1906 

 won the Derby in 2 minutes 38 '8 seconds ; i.e. he 

 maintained a speed of just over 34 miles per hour. 



However, a thoroughly competent observer, Com- 

 mander H. Lynes, has made similar experiments 

 which give decidedly different results. In his 

 observations on the Migration of Birds in the Mediter- 

 ranean {British Birds, Vol. in), he writes : " The 

 only passage speeds I was able to deal with were 

 those of some of the species which arrived flying 

 low. The best observations were made on the 

 Quails by timing them from the moment they crossed 

 the fore-and-aft line of the ship to the moment that, 

 with a pair of glasses, they could be seen to fly into 

 a quail-net exactly 500 yards distant. The result 

 gave a speed of just 50 knots per hour. Corncrakes, 

 Water-Rails and Spotted Crakes arriving appeared 

 to be going just about the same speed, but proper 

 time-observations of them were never obtained." 



Fifty knots is just over 57 miles, a very different 

 verdict from that pronounced on Pigeons by the 

 experiments in the shooting-gallery and the other 

 similar experiments in the open air. And yet the 



* See Charles Lancaster's Illustrated Treatise on the Art of Shoot- 

 ing , p. 175, and Sir R. Payne-Gallwey's Letters to Young Shooters, 

 p. 152. 



